Near-Death Teaches Us Valuable
Lessons
Khen Lim
Image source: Shutterstock
Even before my wife and I were married, we made the decision
to live with my aged parents instead of finding our own home. With my elder
brother living with his own family and working abroad, there was little chance
of him being able to help in any real way. The best we could expect from him was a
once-a-year visit, which for all intents and purposes, wouldn’t make much
difference.
My mother passed away in October 2015 and would have painfully
missed the birth of my twin girls, which was a mere week later. By all accounts, Heather and
Bridget were supposed to be born the day after she died in the same hospital and with that in mind, she fell short by a mere fifteen hours.
After my mother’s passing, my father’s health steadily
declined. A year before she was diagnosed with duodenal cancer, he was pulled
up for an abnormally high level of platelets in his blood. On further
investigation, it was discovered with a persistent case of low haemoglobin
count.
Eventually then came the shocking news that he also had Stage III kidney
failure. Apart from all of this, his heart was weak and his longstanding fight
with diabetes and enlarged prostate all added up to more than any family could
handle in addition to my mother’s cancer.
